CONTEXT: Throughout history people have reported exceptional experiences that appear to transcend the everyday boundaries of space and time, such as perceiving someone’s thoughts from a distance. Because such experiences are associated with superstition, and some violate currently accepted materialist conventions, one might assume that scientists and engineers would be much less likely to report instances of these experiences than the general population. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate 1) the prevalence of exceptional human experiences (EHEs), 2) the level of paranormal belief, 3) the relationship between them, and 4) potential predictors of EHEs in three groups. PARTICIPANTS: Potential volunteers were randomly selected to receive invitations for an anonymous survey. MAIN MEASURES: Data were collected on 25 different types of EHEs, demographics, religious or spiritual affiliations, paranormal beliefs, mental health, and personality traits. Group differences were analyzed with chi-square tests and analysis of variance, and predictors were evaluated with a general linear model. RESULTS: 94.0% of the general population (n = 283), 93.2% of scientists and engineers (n = 175), and 99.3% of enthusiasts (n = 441) endorsed at least one EHE (X2(2) = 21.1, p < 0.0005). Paranormal belief was highest in EHE enthusiasts, followed by scientists and the general population F(2,769) = 116.2, p < 0.0005). Belief was positively correlated with experience (r = 0.61, p < 0.0005). An exploratory general linear model showed that variables such as mental health, personality, impact and family history predict the endorsement and frequency of EHEs. This study indicates that EHEs occur frequently in both the general population and in scientists and engineers.

Polish psychologist and philosopher Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917), who also contributed to psychical research, is the topic of this recently published article: Karolina Maria Hess, The Idea of Ideoplasty and Occult Phenomena in the Theoretical and Empirical Research of Julian Ochorowicz (Preternature, 2018, 7, 239-274; for reprints write to the author: karolinamariahess@gmail.com).

Julian Ochorowicz

Here is the abstract:

Julian Leopold Ochorowicz (1850–1917) was a psychologist, philosopher, and inventor, as well as a photographer, journalist, and poet. As a positivist, he postulated strict research methods in science and treated psychology as a field of study to which the tools of natural sciences can be applied. Ochorowicz’s interest in occult phenomena, which for him were not supernatural but just unexplained and misinterpreted qualities of the human body and mind, in time grew to be the most intriguing topic of his work. Ochorowicz wanted to experimentally examine medium-related and other occult phenomena, which he associated with hypnotic states. He used the term “ideoplasty” for a class of phenomena that he deemed theoretically possible, whereby psychic energy is transformed into material excretions. Ideoplasty was a part of his wider conception of transformations of energy (e.g., of power into motion), which combined his theoretical attitude in psychology and his technical inventions.

Work with Medium Stanislawa Tomczyk

The author concluded: “Ochorowicz knew that by choosing to devote himself to the study of a topic such as mediumic phenomena, he was risking criticisms both from other scientists and from the public opinion. Indeed, his interests and research, which was conducted already after he obtained his habilitation, did not advance Ochorowicz’s academic career . . . Nonetheless, Ochorowicz, convinced that the phenomena he observed actually existed, decided to describe everything in the greatest detail, even if the observations could seem implausible . . . The example of Julian Ochorowicz shows how nuanced and complex the relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were between scientific knowledge and the field of phenomena characterized as occult or paranormal. Ochorowicz’s hypothesis went against the tendency that would later prove to provide a better experimental and theoretic model of reality; he endeavored to describe psychological phenomena directly with physical concepts, but it cannot be denied that his motivation was purely and properly scientific.”

We used an online survey to investigate the relations among synesthesia, schizotypy, exceptional experiences (ExEs), and well-being. Participants (N 1,628 [listwise N 767]; male 619, female 1,064) completed a Synesthesia Experience Questionnaire (SEQ), a general question about synesthetic experiences (Hartmann, 1991), the Anomalous Experience Subscale (AES) of the Anomalous Experience Inventory (Gallagher, Kumar, & Pekala, 1994), questions about parapsychological experiences, a multidimensional measure of schizotypy (Oxford-Liverpool Inventory for Feelings and Experiences Short [O-LIFE Short]; Mason, Linney, & Claridge, 2005), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). Cronbach’s alphas for these measures ranged from .63 to .90 in our data set. Approximately half (54.4%) of the sample reported 1 or more synesthetic experiences, although the rate was much lower for synesthesias experienced on a consistent basis (3.1%). The SEQ was highly internally reliable and correlated positively with the AES, number of parapsychological experiences, and unusual experiences, and negatively with introvertive anhedonia. The SEQ was not directly related to the SWLS. Unusual experiences and synesthesia were the strongest predictors of the AES and parapsychological experiences in multiple regression models. A cluster analysis of schizotypy found 4 clusters of schizotypy, including 1 cluster reflecting healthy schizotypy, 1 reflecting high schizotypy, 1 reflecting low schizotypy, and 1 reflecting negative schizotypy. We compared clusters in terms of the SWLS, ExEs, and the SEQ and found significant differences for all variables and higher scores for healthy compared with high schizotypy on all variables. We discuss the complex relations among synesthesia, schizotypy, and well-being.

The authors stated in the conclusion: “We documented a high rate of synesthesia, depending on how we defined synesthesia. When synesthesia was judged present when it occurs “at least once,” 54.3% of participants reported synesthesia. Because the question refers to a general description of synesthetic tendencies, it may be subject to interpretation. However, because it is possible to have a “one off” experience, our finding implies that a complete account of synesthesias should not be restricted to a definition based entirely on a consistent response to an inducing stimulus.”

“We found support for a not-uncommon tendency to experience synesthetic phenomena, and we replicated findings that some experiences of synesthesia are more common than others. We also determined that synesthesia shares variance with positive schizotypy (unusual experiences) and with ExEs [exceptional experiences], when defined broadly, and traditional parapsychological experiences. Regression analyses supported the potential contributing roles of both unusual experiences and synesthesia in the etiology of ExEs.”

“From its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century, mediumship was considered by some scientists and medical professionals to be a pathological phenomenon, explicable in terms of nervous and psychological disturbance. Others viewed the paranormal elements of mediumship as genuine while holding an underlying pathology to be the cause. This article describes a range of such views held during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

Most of these ideas are not widely supported today.

As seen in the abstract, I focused my discussion of two groups: those who saw mediumship as pathology, with no veridical manifestations, and those who conceptualizaed it as paranormal, but also pathological.

The first group included individuals such as Philibert Burlet, William Hammond, Frederic R. Marvin, Pierre Janet, and Joseph Lévy-Valensy.

American physician Frederic R. Marvin wrote about mediumship in his The Philosophy of Spiritualism and the Pathology and Treatment of Mediomania (1874). In this short book Marvin wrote: “Like other disorders mediomania is a member of a family from which it is not easily alienated. Hysteria, chorea, utromania, and mediomania are all in one group, and though not always attended by the same causes they are very closely related.”

Reflecting 19th century ideas of uterine pathology, Marvin stated: “Tilt the organ a little forward — introvert it, and immediately the patient forsakes her home, embraces some strange and ultra ism — Mormonism, Mesmerism, Fourierism, Socialism, oftener Spiritualism. She becomes possessed by the idea that she has some startling mission in the world.”

I wrote about the French clinician Pierre Janet: “For Janet, most mediums were victims of a nervous crisis, ‘neuropaths, when they are not obvious hysterics’. He wrote: ‘The movement of tables begins only when women or children, that is to say, people prone to nervous accidents [symptoms] put their hands… around a table’. Mediumship was related to a pathological state that could eventually become hysterical, although Janet held mediumship to be a symptom rather than a cause.” Janet stated these ideas in his classic work L’Automatisme Psychologique (1889).

Pierre Janet

Interestingly, there were also believers in mediumship, particularly physical mediumship, who believed that real phenomena and pathology coexisted, and were linked. Examples include Francis Gerry Fairfield, Cesare Lombroso, and Enrico Morselli.

I wrote about Fairfield: “Although he had no medical training, his observations of mediums led him to believe that psychic phenomena were related to nervous system lesions . . . and that these lesions developed ‘a peculiar sensory and motor aura’ (atmosphere), which, entering into ‘intimate molecular relations and contact with surrounding objects’ led to phenomena such as clairvoyance, table-tipping, rappings, and the like . . . Fairfield believed that this aura related to disorders of the nervous system.”

“In his 1908 book Psicologia e ‘Spiritismo,’ Morselli . . . saw Palladino, and all mediums, as victims of disease, which he termed a metahysterical condition’ . . . Mediums, he believed, ‘if not seriously impaired in their physio-psychic constitution, are always, in some way, affected during the exercise of their faculty by a functional disorder of the nervous system.’ ”

Enrico Morselli

The latter group of theoreticians represent ideas that deserve more historical exploration. A case in point is the work of Lombroso.

In the article I mention some critiques of these ideas and point point that recent research has not supported those views. I also present a bibliography of historical studies, such as:

The site SurvivalAfterDeath | CienciasPsíquicas, in Spanish, has much information about psychical research, particularly about mediumship and the topic of survival of death. There is a section presenting links to many important books, (click here), many of which have been taken from other digital libraries such as Internet Archive and Google Books. Here are some examples.

These are only a few examples of many other books available in this collection. In addition, the are many issues of the Annals of Psychical Science, and of the Proceedings and Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

“This paper investigates the controversy following the publication of work by scientists working at the Stanford Research Institute that claimed to show that the extraordinary mental powers of 1970s super psychic Uri Geller were real. The thesis argues that the controversy around Geller represented a shift in how skeptical scientists treated parapsychology. Instead of engaging with parapsychology and treating it as an incipient, if unpromising scientific discipline, which had been the norm since the pioneering work of J.B. Rhine in the 1930s, parapsychology’s critics portrayed the discipline as a pseudoscience, little more than an attempt by credulous scientists to confirm their superstitious belief in occult psychic powers. The controversy around Geller also led to the creation of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), one of the first skeptical organizations specializing in investigating supposed instances of paranormal phenomena. I argue that the shift in critics’ attitudes and the creation of CSICOP were partially due to a fear among some scientists and their supporters that the scientific work on Geller would lend legitimacy to the “Occult Revival”—a term used to describe rising popular interest in the occult, astrology and psychic abilities in the late 1960s and early 1970s.”

Over the years I have written several articles about Charles Richet’s psychical research, among them a general overview of his work on the subject, and an analysis of his Traité de Métapsychique (1922). My last published discussion of Richet is an article in which I translated and reprinted a chapter from one of his books in which he presented an autobiographical essay of his involvement with the subject. Here is the reference and the abstract:

Charles Richet

“Fragments of a Life in Psychical Research: The Case of Charles Richet” (Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2018, 32, 55–78; PDF available on request: carlos@theazire.org).

Abstract

“In this paper I present a translation of an autobiographical essay French physiologist Charles Richet wrote about his involvement in psychical research in his Souvenirs d’un Physiologiste (1933). In the essay Richet presented an outline of aspects of his psychic career, including: Early interest in hypnosis and hypnotic lucidity, encounters with gifted individuals such as Eusapia Palladino and Stephan Ossowiecki, contact with the Society for Psychical Research, his Traité de Métapsychique (1922) and his lack of belief in survival of death. Richet’s account will be of particular interest for those who are not acquainted with his career. However, the essay is succinct and lacks important events that need to be supplemented with other sources of information. An examination of this autobiographical essay illustrates the limitations of autobiographies to reconstruct the past, but also provides an opportunity to discuss aspects of Richet’s psychical research.”

I wrote: “One of the purposes of the present article is to present information about Richet’s interest in psychic phenomena via his own, admittedly brief, account. It is my impression that most contemporary workers in parapsychology, although aware of Richet’s existence, know little about his actual work. Being short, and personal, the excerpt presented below may be of more relevance to workers in parapsychology than the more academic writings cited above. The reprint of the excerpt is also an opportunity to give Richet a voice never heard before in English, since the excerpt in question originally was published in French.”

“Richet was part of this movement, particularly strong in France, that explored the existence and range of non-conscious human functioning and that included both conventional and unconventional phenomena . . . This is seen in his writings about personality changes in hypnosis, unconscious movements, and the induction of trance at a distance . . .”

“An important early contribution, and a classic of Nineteenth-Century ESP literature, was Richet’s [1884] article about mental suggestion, or the “influence that an individual’s thought exerts over a specific sense, without an appreciable exterior phenomenon on our senses, over the thought of a nearby individual”. . . This included transmission of thoughts and images, as well as other effects such as the induction of trance at a distance. In the paper, Richet described his use of statistical analyses in several guessing tasks with various targets, as well as discussions of conceptual ideas such as the unconscious nature of the process . . . In later papers Richet continued testing various gifted individuals . . . and included observations of Polish psychic Stephan Ossowiecki (1877-1944) . . .”

Stefan Ossowiecki

“There were also many experiences with various mediums and psychics. Examples were séances with Eusapia Palladino (1854–1918 . . .) and Leonora E. Piper (1857–1950 . . .). Richet’s . . . materialization séances with medium Marthe Béraud are well-known, an episode that generated many controversies . . . Here both full and partial materializations were observed . . .”

Marthe Béraud

The best known of his works was the highly influential Traité de Métapsychique [1922] . . . where instead of psychical research he used the term “métapsychique” (metapsychics), a word he had suggested before . . . In the Traité, and elsewhere, Richet frequently expressed hope that future developments in science would allow us to understand psychic phenomena. His popularization and discussion of psychical research not only continued in other books . . . but also in articles in non-psychic journals . . . and in newspapers . . . In addition to the above mentioned examples, Richet’s articles in psychic journals included topics such as statistical analyses of ESP tests . . . , recurrent doubts in the study of psychic phenomena . . . , the decimal indexing of psychic literature . . . , xenoglossy . . . , an ancient case of near-death experience . . . , premonitions . . . , and survival of death . . .”

“Richet did much to support psychical research in various forums of conventional science. He opened the door to, and defended the importance of, psychical research in the international congresses of psychology . . . He was also one of the founders of a very important French journal, the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, first published in 1891, where not only French but also authors from other countries discussed psychic phenomena . . . Furthermore, Richet was a supporter of the Institut Métapsychique International since its beginnings.”

The article also illustrates the limitations of autobiographies as historical documents. An analysis of the essay considering Richet’s publications about psychic topics shows occasional omissions of important information and incorrect recollection of facts. “Autobiographies, like history in general, are reconstructions of the past, but reconstructions based on one person’s perspective and motivations, on their priorities at the moment of ordering the recollections of a lifetime. The latter is particularly an issue.” Nonetheless, “when used together with other sources of information . . . [autobiographies] are not only informative, but illuminating of a time period.”

Although I have not personally met Dr. Damien Broderick, I have corresponded with him and I have followed his previous writings in parapsychology, mainly his high quality books Outside the Gates of Science: Why It’s Time for the Paranormal to Come In From The Cold (Thunder’s Mouth, 2007), and Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports (edited with Ben Goertzel; McFarland, 2015). I commented on this last book in a previous blog.

“Science fiction has often been considered the literature of futuristic technology: fantastic warfare among the stars or ruinous apocalypses on Earth. The last century, however, saw through John W. Campbell the introduction of “psience fiction,” which explores themes of mind powers—telepathy, precognition of the future, teleportation, etc.—and symbolic machines that react to such forces. The author surveys this long-ignored literary shift through a series of influential novels and short stories published between the 1930s and the present. This discussion is framed by the sudden surge of interest in parapsychology and its absorption not only into the SF genre, but also into the real world through military experiments such as the Star Gate Program.”

What is your background in parapsychology, and with the topic of the book specifically?

I grew up as a pious Catholic working class kid in Australia during the 1950s, and to the horror of my parents became infatuated with gaudy science fiction comics and magazines. The more sophisticated magazines (but often still quite garish) were not easily found in Australia back then, but a factory worker living across the street allowed me to borrow his copies of the British New Worlds and Science Fantasy, and the premier US zines Astounding and Galaxy. What most captivated me was the range of psi-inflected tales in the early to mid-1950s: stories closer to magic, really, than to science, like Star Wars decades later.

Several elements attracted me, especially a frequent emphasis on quirky intelligent characters, often despised but gifted with unusual abilities such as telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and teleportation. I knew this was all wild fiction, but it let my imagination soar freely. Imagine my astonishment when my mother one day brought home from the library (I was a sickly kid) a copy of J.B. Rhine’s The Reach of the Mind. What! This man was a scientist and yet he claimed that psi abilities were real! I started testing it alone or with my younger siblings, and had some hair-raising successes.

Then conventional attitudes kicked in, and I decided psi was just a story-telling device after all. I went to university to study literature and philosophy, and was introduced to Len Kane, the former teacher of a uni friend, a clinical psychologist a few years older than us with an interest in psi. In 1970, after I’d started work in journalism, I read an article in Analog (the spruced-up version of what had once been called, with vulgar brashness, Astounding) describing a repeated-guessing, majority-vote approach to telepathy that had worked in the lab, although only just.

I was struck by the realization that this approach might be used to create a real-world psi application based on getting messages from the future—controlled precognition! I rushed to where Len had a post at an interstate university, and we built a monstrous noisy machine in the lab that recorded our guesses at a future string—a target which, naturally, was generated by a horse race some days hence. The first time we tried it, we got the right horse. This was probably the most electrifying and delightful experience of my life. We planned repetitions, anticipating our Nobel Prize. But it didn’t work the second time, or the third time… Just a coincidence on the initial test? Or had some psychological barrier or unconscious angst blocked our psi after that first shock?

I went back to old publications where somewhat similar approaches to psi application had been reported. Some were successful in just the way I expected; others were apparently failures. I taught myself enough statistics to reanalyze these early results and in quite a number of cases found that the experimenters had simply failed to compensate for guessing biases. Using internal controls (essentially, tabulating how frequently a certain symbol was chosen when it was randomly chosen as the target, compared with its score when it was not target), I was able to recover correct results from famous, allegedly debunked experiments with huge numbers of participants (such as the Zenith radio tests in the 1930s). I ran a rather over-ambitious newspaper precognition test, and obtained some provocative results.

Meanwhile, I had started writing science fiction and selling it both in Australia and the US. In 1980, I published a novel titled The Dreaming Dragons that was selected as one of the 100 best since Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The following year I flew for the first time to the US, and spent several days with the Rhine researchers in Durham. Eventually I wrote a popular science study of psi in general and my results after obtaining three quarters of a billion guesses at a major Australian lottery. Many years later I revised and expanded my treatment of such data in Knowing the Unknowable, which is full of charts and numbers. It failed to sell a million copies, alas.

What motivated you to write this book?

All of the above is the background to my continuing interest in psi phenomena, enhanced when I had the good fortune to be invited to join a closed online list of psi experts. Few of them agree with each other over the metaphysics of psi—how it works, what it is for (in evolutionary terms, for example), what its relationship is to consciousness and philosopher David Chalmers’ “Hard Problem.” I summarized a lot of this in Outside the Gates of Science, which was quite well received by the psi community and even persuaded Dr. Ben Goertzel, a brilliant polymathic AI researcher, that there actually is something in these preposterous claims. That led to Ben’s and my co-editing a hefty book from McFarland, Evidence for Psi. Somewhere during all this I’d done a PhD in critical literary theory (and published 70 books), and I realized that it might be worth going back to those stories about psi that had so enthralled me when I was 12 or 14, and look at the impact of psi research on science fiction and of science fiction on parapsychology. That became Psience Fiction, a term I borrowed from an English reviewer of Alfred Bester’s spectacular psi-futurist novel The Stars My Destination from the late 1950s.

But why did I do it? Because I still love science fiction and remain endlessly curious about psi, and I wanted to put them together across the last century or so and see what the result looked like. It was a lot of fun.

Why do you think your book is important and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Well, psi is obviously important yet still often ignored or disparaged by scientists who have never bothered to investigate its evidence tracks. Meanwhile, science fiction in the previous century engaged with serious work on atomic power (and weapons), space flight, telecommunications, genomics, etc. Its most influential editor, John W. Campbell, of Astounding/Analog fame, was obsessed with psi in the mid-century. What could have happened that apparently caused its core audience to lose interest, especially at the very moment that real-world psi research was being funded by the US government, other nations, and some major corporations? I think my book is the first to approach this topic seriously and not with its tongue snidely in its cheek.

But I don’t wish to be solemn—I hope your blog readers will find it intriguing and amusing, as I did writing it.

Dr. K. Ramakrishna Rao, from India, has been in parapsychology for many decades. I first met him at the Institute for Parapsychology (now Rhine Research Center) in the 1980s. He is well known as a philosopher, psychologist and parapsychologist, and was recently awarded the National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, to work on a project entitled “The Bhagavad Gita: A Psychological Profile.”

K. Ramakrishna Rao

In the past, Dr. Rao has held many high level positions. He is currently Chancellor at the Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management. In addition to being Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University, he was an Advisor on Higher Education to the Government of Andhra Pradesh, and Vice-Chairman of Andhra Pradesh State Planning Board. Furthermore, for several years he was the Executive Director of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (founded by J.B. Rhine).

In parapsychology Dr. Rao is known for his many ESP experiments, most of which have appeared over the years in the Journal of Parapsychology. But he has also published books, and edited anthologies of papers on the subject: Psi Cognition (Tenali: Tagore Publishing House, 1957); Experimental Parapsychology: A Review and Interpretation (Springfield: Charles C Thomas, 1966); Mystic Awareness: Four Lectures on the Paranormal (Mysore: Mysore University Press, 1972); Experimental Studies of the Differential Effect in Life Setting (with P. Sailaja; Parapsychological Monograph. No. 13. New York: Parapsychology Foundation. 1973); J.B. Rhine: On the Frontiers of Science. (Editor). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. 1982); Case Studies in Parapsychology. (Editor). Jefferson, NC.: McFarland, 1986); Charles Honorton and the Impoverished State of Skepticism: Essays on a Parapsychological Pioneer. (Editor). NC: McFarland, 1994); Basic Research in Parapsychology (2nd ed., Jefferson, NC: McFarland,. 2001); and Cognitive Anomalies: Consciousness and Yoga (New Delhi: Center for Studies in Civilizations and Matrix Publishers, 2011).

The Elements of Parapsychology is a concise and yet a comprehensive introduction to psychic phenomena. Though coextensive with recorded human history, these phenomena remained for long a mystery and a matter of faith rather than a subject of serious scientific study. However, about a century and half ago, they caught the attention of scientists, who since attempted sporadically to investigate them.

A systematic study of these phenomena as a scientific pursuit began with the work of J.B. Rhine at Duke University under the tutelage of William McDougall, one of the leading psychologists at the time. The first output of this effort resulted in the publication of a research monograph Extra-Sensory Perception by Rhine in 1934, followed by Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years (ESP-60) in 1940, a review of relevant research and the controversies surrounding it until then. I have about fifty years ago published my Experimental Parapsychology which meant to be a supplement to ESP-60.

Notwithstanding the life long struggle to win scientific credibility for and acceptance of the existence of extrasensory abilities by J.B. Rhine and his wife Louisa E. Rhine and those who followed them, the subject continues to be controversial. The reason is not lack of sufficient empirical and experimental evidence but the fact that the phenomena pose a theoretical challenge to the worldview incorporated in science in general. Therefore, what is needed is not more research and data to prove the existence of psychic phenomena but reasonable understanding of their theoretical base, its methods of study, concepts and controversies.

The Elements of Parapsychology is an updated overview of the subject, its problems and prospects.

What is your background in parapsychology, and with the topic of the book specifically?

I have been involved in parapsychology since 1953 when I was a graduate student. I wrote my M.A. (Hons.) dissertation with focus on parapsychology. I published my first book in 1957 under the title Psi Cognition. J.B. Rhine wrote the Foreword. With that small beginning our association continued for decades. I headed Rhine’s Institute for Parapsychology and the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM) for nearly two decades. I was associated with the Journal of Parapsychology, mostly as its Editor, for an equal number of years. My most recent contribution is the book Cognitive Anomalies, Consciousness and Yoga.

What motivated you to write this book?

To share my current thoughts. I was greatly benefitted by the incisive comments of Robert Franklin which helped to greatly improve the quality of the contents.

Why do you think your book is important and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

I hope the book would serve as an useful introduction for anyone interested in parapsychology. It could also serve as a textbook for first level courses in parapsychology.

“Open data in science brings important benefits, most notably the potential to accelerate scientific discovery, and the ability for the community to verify research findings. In addition to exploring these benefits, this paper considers concerns that some researchers may have about the approach. Publishing strategies, copyright and database right considerations, confidentiality, preparation of data for publication, and the citation of datasets are also discussed, as is the importance of journal policy. The second section of the paper presents Psi Open Data (https://open-data.spr.ac.uk), an open repository for parapsychology and psychical research data recently launched by the Society for Psychical Research. The repository is constructed using DKAN, an open source open data platform with a full suite of cataloging, publishing, and visualization features. It allows administrator users to upload research datasets, and any visitor to search for and download datasets. Various aspects of the repository are described: data structures, metadata, data classification, preview, and download facilities. Researchers are encouraged to support the repository by contributing datasets from both current and previous work.”

The author writes:

“Open data can accelerate the rate of discovery in the following ways:

•Enabling researchers to explore questions not envisioned by the original investigators, and to address old questions in new ways, through re-use of data.

•Enabling meta-analyses, and the creation of new datasets by combining multiple data sources.

•Making possible the testing of alternative hypotheses, and the use of different methods of analysis; sharing of data encourages diversity of analysis and opinion.

Another key benefit of open data is transparency. Open data allows the community to identify errors in the research record through the reproduction of research findings, thereby preventing wasteful allocation of resources exploring research avenues founded upon erroneous conclusions.”

It is stated at the end of the article:

“Researchers who support the aims of the initiative are encouraged to contribute datasets. The best time to prepare data for publication is throughout the process of creating it, and while preparing the associated research report for publication, not at some later time when a request for the data is received. The effort to prepare data for open data practices is relatively small if the data are collected and managed with data sharing in mind. As well as datasets from current projects, old datasets are valuable and researchers are also encouraged to submit these. Datasets placed in the repository will continue to benefit generations of researchers long into the future.”